A boy is excited at the prospect of finding treasure in an old house; a girl meets a strange creature with a magical gift; a retired teachers reminisces about the students whose lives she touched; and a colour-blind child triumphs in art class ...

Vandana, Afreen and Tara stumble upon Rasphora, a magnificent land behind a waterfall. The prophecy of the land says that it is in grave danger, and the girls must leave their old lives behind if they want to save it. But they are just children - can they really fulfil the prophecy?

A young girl sat straight-backed on the edge of her chair, chewing a yellow pencil. She wiped her table clean with her palm, and with reverence, took out five clean sheets of papers. With a smile of joy, she began to write.

Fancied Orchid School is already 33 for no loss in the three overs before lunch. Can Model School successfully unleash its secret weapon, Anshuman the chess nerd, and win the match? Neeru decides to start playing hockey like her mother to deal with her loss, and discovers there’s no therapy like getting some dirt on her spotless whites ...

I love writing for children, and have been writing since I was seven. Hugely influenced by Enid Blyton, I began my publishing “career” at the age of seven and a half with a story about a dame (blame Enid Blyton for that) who hated plants. I went on to mice who turned into fairies and pixies who never drove or gave away their cars.

A little older now, I have a collection of short stories called The Story-Catcher, a few books on trains, and an odd story here and there. Many more are in the pipeline and will be available very soon.

I also conduct reading and writing workshops for children and, much to my surprise, for adults too.

What’s new?

A lovely, long article about my journey as a writer! Here’s the clipping, which links to the epaper. Another version of the article (slightly longer and with different pictures) can be found here.

The story of my journey as a writer

“The Dictionary” from The Story-Catcher

The video bug has caught me too! Here’s a reading-cum-storytelling of a short story I often use at workshops too, “The Dictionary”. Will (hopefully soon) blog about how I use it during workshops.

“Wow!” breathed Harshil, bubbles rising before him.
In a moment, the cave was open fully and it seemed to invite him in. He had almost run out of breath and he looked up, worried. He knew he ought to go up, but something called him deep, deep into the cave.

“Dad, your generation didn’t even have mobile phones,” said Deven, firing up again. “Just because we do, you want to check on me, check on me, check on me all the time. Why can’t you just let me be?” Heaving his bag closer to his neck once more, he went into the room adjoining Chitra’s and slammed the door.
Renuka Tiwari gave a crooked smile. “The joys of having a teenaged son,” she commented.

A Tigress Called Machhli has added at least three places to my neverending list of places I want to visit: Kokkare Bellur, the village of storks, Kalo Dungar in the Rann of Kutch and Jawai for the leopards. A collection of true animal stories promised to be delightful, and A Tigress Called Machhli did not let me down. I loved the lighthearted […]

Doesn’t the title just grab your attention? The edition of Al Capone Does My Shirts that I picked up begins with a letter from the author Gennifer Choldenko, where she talks about having set out to write a book for boys. And somehow, Natalie, an autistic sixteen-year-old, slipped into the story, making it far more steeped in emotion than […]

What did you do on World Dance Day? We put up two performances! To be completely honest, we did not plan the performances keeping World Dance Day in mind; things just fell into place that way. We were scheduled to perform in Udupi on the 28th of April, and one of the dancers in our […]

Performances, performances. So often, the joy of dancing on stage comes from the story about it, which can be told and retold ad infinitum. I’ve written about this before, of course I have. My first performance with the ‘big girls’, when we got so immersed in the drama that we ignored the recorded music The […]

Why do we dance? And why do people suspend their lives for a couple of hours to watch? Performing arts seem to exist in a world of their own, with their own rules and rigorous demands. What other field has a saying like ‘The show must go on’? I think the joy of a performance […]

So often, I come across posts that talk about how lit fests are a waste of time for authors, and how lit fests exclude rather than include. For me, though, lit fests remain unadulterated fun. Does this have something to do with being a children’s writer, perhaps? The Lit Bug Fest, Pune’s own lit fest, […]

Last month, The Story Station invited me to interact with a group of young writers. I spoke about my journey as a writer and conducted an activity based on my latest middle-grade novel, The Prophecy of Rasphora. A little about the book … Three young girls stumble upon Rasphora, a land behind a waterfall. There, they begin to […]

The Pen to Paper competition was a nationwide search for young writers, organised by Edupeer and ICICI Lombard. It received about 10,000 entries! These were narrowed down to 2,000 and 1,000 and then, finally, the top 150 writers from all over the country were selected to receive training from an author. When FunOKPlease contacted me […]